


Memento Mori

by sarriathmg



Series: Bottom Jason Todd Week 2020 [11]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Succubi & Incubi, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bottom Jason Todd, Bottom Jason Todd Week, Bottoming from the Top, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dream Sex, Grief/Mourning, Horror, M/M, Mindfuck, NSFW Art, Pseudo-Incest, Psychological Horror, Sibling Incest, Underage Sex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarriathmg/pseuds/sarriathmg
Summary: The face doesn’t belong to a dead boy. It cannot be - the flush on his cheeks bright, the tone of his skin vibrant - too full of life to be anything but. Jason still possesses all the same characteristics of his waking counterpart; teenage face not yet grown to full adulthood, facial hair hasn’t quite settled in and never will. The same boy who was alive except forever frozen in his adolescence within this twisted form of immortality. Yet, his eyes are an unnatural shade of green, so very different than those ocean blues that Dick was so used to seeing, almost glowing as they peek out from the darkness outside his window, framed with a ring of black around the iris, too dark and too pure to be human, almost like coal.“Dickie,” Jason says, voice raspy as it is these days, with a dreamy quality to it, the sound of his own name vibrating seductively from the tongue prompts a trembling pleasure down Dick’s spine, “I’m here, big brother. Let me in. Please say ‘you can come in’.”Or: Jason died. Instead of clawing out of his grave to join the living, he did so as one of the undead.Bottom Jason Todd Week Day 5: Vampire AU
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Series: Bottom Jason Todd Week 2020 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872757
Comments: 2
Kudos: 100
Collections: Bottom Jason Todd Week 2020





	Memento Mori

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [【图文NSFW】Memento Mori （勿忘你终有一死）](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25904152) by [sarriathmg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarriathmg/pseuds/sarriathmg)



> This is the first fic I wrote for this event and it's what I wanted to write for vampire AU when I harassed people to vote for this prompt😂
> 
> Isn't it ironic how "Vampire AU" is on the same day as "Jason never died AU"? I find that hilarious. This is not going to be your typical vampire story, note the tags. It's probably the closest thing to dead dove I've written for this fandom. The horror tag is there for a reason. The art in this is in the same vein, can definitely be considered disturbing for some. So consider yourself warned before you read this.
> 
> Thanks to BunnyJess for betaeing for me.

Lining the windows of his room is an array of little spheres of purple and white flowers, delicate and fragile, blooming in the midst of their springs. Yet the smell is pungent, notably unbearable in this room stuffy with the heat of a coming summer, nearly begging to be aired out.

It’s 7:45pm, and the light of the sun is getting dimmer by the minute. Dick’s fingers gently stroke the little crucifix under his nightshirt as he sits on the bed, looking out the window, half musing and half zoning out. Almost starting to expect Jason’s face popping up from right under the windowsill at any minute, hair messy with a few leaves and rose petals picked up from the garden, wrinkly burial suit looking ridiculous on his small frame - almost too small, even for his age - cheeks flushing with all the signs of life as he scratches the pane with dull nails still faintly stuffed with dirt, eyes glimmering an unnatural light as he begs to be let in.

Bruce had also seen the ghostly face of the dead boy. He’d never said anything until that visit with the therapist he’d been putting off for months. When the man finally relented, he all but broke down with his head in his hands on the office sofa and spilled everything to both the doctor and Dick. Bruce had been regarding it as an illusion all this time, some sick trick his grief-addled mind was playing on him, and he pretended the vision wasn’t real, he said that he  _ knew _ it wasn’t. Then, Bruce managed to gather himself again and politely ask for this information to be withheld from Alfred, directing the speech to Dick rather than to the doctor. Nothing good could come from troubling the butler with the grief, he’d said. Jason was dead, and what Bruce saw and experienced shouldn’t matter. Nothing would change, and they just had to go on with their lives like it didn’t matter. Death was permanent, and there’s nothing any of them could do. 

Dick just sat there quietly and listened to Bruce going on and on about how everything was his fault, and the ghostly apparition of his deceased son was but a well-deserved retribution for his failure as a father. Dick had never seen Bruce so broken before.

Except, he knew it wasn’t true. Death isn’t permanent, because Jason isn’t dead. Not really, not in the literal sense of the word.

Dick had been to the grave. He’d seen the gruesome photos. But he never had a chance to attend the ceremony and to stare at his brother’s resting face before sending him off. Maybe if he did he’d have come to terms with his passing. Maybe if he did, Dick would actually accept Jason’s death.

By the time the news reached him, Dick was traveling somewhere down south, and by then it was already too late. His little brother was dead and buried. He’d promised that he’d be back to celebrate his sixteenth birthday, but ironically, he’d never made it to the funeral - could not be with him, neither for life nor for death. He had left to protect the boy from himself; left to go to somewhere where his deepest and darkest desires could not find the innocence too pure to be tainted by his sick, hideous fantasies. The only good it did was to seal the fate that they would never meet again, not before the flames of youth were prematurely snuffed out. Youth belonging to an adolescent life that deserved everything but.

Dick had dreamt about the coffin. He’d dreamt about the grave and the tombstone, the wilting flowers decorating the cold monument to a dead boy under a depressingly overcast sky. Dick had dreamt about digging up the loose dirt with his bare hands as rain poured down, the soil wet and his nails torn and bloody. Grief was his only salvation and he drowned in his sorrow as he kept on digging up his perished brother’s body, not believing that he was truly gone - not really. 

Then he opened the coffin, half expecting to see the boy lying in there with still a flicker of breath, perhaps eyes wide open, unresponsive but not completely dead. Alive, still a glimmer of life left in him, still something to  _ hold on to. _ Except in his dreams, that’s not what Dick saw. What Dick saw was not Jason, not a living boy nor a rotting corpse bloated by decomposition and eating away by maggots. Instead, what Dick saw was nothing. An empty coffin, a hollow box that was meant to house the remains of his departed beloved.

And then Dick would always wake up, cold sweats adorning his forehead and neck, shaking, barely holding himself up.

Dick was so close to bringing a shovel to Jason’s grave and digging it up himself, like some incestuous sinful twin of Victor Frankenstein. Defiling the resting place of the dead for the simple reason of easing his mind. A selfish intent to verify that Jason truly was dead and that Dick could hold this knowledge and rest in peace.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do that to him. Jason was dead and he couldn’t even be with him at his funeral. The least Dick could do is to preserve the boy’s memory by not desecrating his resting place. 

So Dick made do, wallowing in the abyss of his grief and unhealthy obsessions, giving in to his own toxic coping mechanisms. He went to Jason’s grave, brought him flowers. Started staying more and more in the manor, if for nothing other than to be closer to the grave, to the shadows of Jason’s existence. The first couple of times Dick went to visit it was during the day - sunny on the first and rainy on the second. Dick sat there for hours, reading the name carved on the stone again and again, unwilling to leave and unwilling to accept. He sat there, wanting to feel some connection still to the boy buried underneath the earth, maybe still alive somehow, would still come back to him. But Dick felt none. Not a breath of life, not a hint of a connection. He was too awake, too sober, too  _ sane _ to be able to talk with his dead brother.

Instead of giving up, Dick decided to try going there again at a later hour. The gravestones were colored a slight orange by the receding sun, and the flowers he brought looked more like blood-stained roses than white ones. Trees started to cast long shadows that inspired the images of ghouls and spirits that inhabited the graves. There’s always something creepy about the time of twilight when the light of day was just backing out and giving way to the dark of the night, and the cemetery always looked eerie under the gradually dimming rays.

He never got to see it. Dick still can't remember when or how he got home that day. He must have sat in front of the gravestone like usual, but then blacked out when nightfall came, remembering a faint, way-too-familiar voice calling him and two green orbs shining through the darkness, as well as a slight stinging sensation located somewhere behind his right ear.

He woke up in his room the next afternoon, his window wide open. Dick had the vague memories of a half-remembered dream, filled with hidden desires and the consummation of a taboo union. Kisses, with a pair of soft lips concealing sharp needles for teeth, and on top of bare shoulders, silky shirt sliding off to reveal the sculpted form of adolescence that had moved on from childhood but not yet an adult. The warmth and softness of touch, and the fresh, lovely scents of rain and the earth. Noting all the signs of life as his hardness was gently guided through a tight entrance to the passage within which felt too good to be real. The warmth that then surrounded him as he was ridden by the astral nymph to completion, and a dreamy, intoxicating,  _ bewitching _ voice sounding too familiar to not be his own:  _ Come in. _ It said, right before the being followed him into his room.

It’s eight o’clock now, the sun is fully down, the twilight coloring the trees outside the manor an eerie purple and it’s the time when creatures of the night start to rouse from their slumber. Dick knows that it won’t be long before Jason comes to him.

He hears the sound of rapping before he sees the ghost. The methodical noise of the calm and orderly  _ thud, thud, thud _ gently but firmly knocks on his window. Dick looks over, eager to see the mop of raven hair and bright face of his brother at the entrance.

The face doesn’t belong to a dead boy. It cannot be - the flush on his cheeks bright, the tone of his skin vibrant - too full of life to be anything but. Jason still possesses all the same characteristics of his waking counterpart; teenage face not yet grown to full adulthood, facial hair hasn’t quite settled in and never will. The same boy who was alive except forever frozen in his adolescence within this twisted form of immortality. Yet, his eyes are an unnatural shade of green, so very different than those ocean blues that Dick was so used to seeing, almost glowing as they peek out from the darkness outside his window, framed with a ring of black around the iris, too dark and too pure to be human, almost like coal.

“Dickie,” Jason says, voice raspy as it is these days, with a dreamy quality to it, the sound of his own name vibrating seductively from the tongue prompts a trembling pleasure down Dick’s spine, “I’m here, big brother. Let me in. Please say ‘you can come in’.”

Dick swallows from anticipation, relief washing over him as his body settles from the knowledge that his lover has come to him yet again, that once again it’s not a dream or a fruitless wait. So filled with excitement, his voice almost catches in his throat as he quickly whispers those fateful words.

“Yes, you can come in. Please come in, Jason.”

Jason doesn’t actually smile - this Jason never does. Rather, the curvatures of his face relax into a softer, much more poised expression, his inhuman eyes glistening through the dark. Dick can almost see the boy perking up as he reaches for the latch and pushes the pane out of the way with ease, then he all but hauls himself up to kneel on the windowsill, and pushes his legs inside, one knee after the other.

The boy’s trouser-clad legs crush a few flower bundles underneath them, not at all fazed by the strong-smelling plants. His black suit is dusty from dirt and pieces of grass, and his hair messy from the wind and the trip through the bushes. Then he hops down, agile like a mouse and lands with a grace that Dick had often seen in him in life.

Then Jason starts to walk towards him, Dick shifts slightly so he can see him better. The form approaching him walks upright in a balletic manner, but there’s just something… off about his movements. There are some easy-to-miss details that separate this Jason from someone still living. Some small differences in his mannerism that Dick can’t place, an uncanny valley.

Despite this Jay is more beautiful than ever - more beautiful than when he was alive, even. Dick could’ve swore that his cheeks never glowed in such a brilliant shade of rosiness, his skin never looked so plump and healthy, and his expression… equal parts ethereal and seductive like some mysterious offspring of the heavenly and the damned. And his eyes - despite everything, despite the eeriness of its color and fiendish glow, speaks of some enticing invitation that lets Dick in like he never had in life, giving Dick the access to the boy’s soul… naked and vulnerable, corrupted though it is. This is not Jason, but rather a duplicate of him. An uncanny version of him that’s more provocative and captivating, more unearthly, but just as alive as ever.

Despite the old stories, the writings one could find in antique occult books, the garlic flowers do nothing against a being like this. Yet, as it turns out, the rosary does have some power over him. As soon as Jason sinks into Dick’s lap, hands resting on the man’s chest, the boy shrinks back as if he was burned; an almost inhuman screech leaves his throat, making him sound like a wounded animal.

He doesn’t leave Dick’s lap, rather curls in on himself, hugging his injured hand close. Hisses and growls coming out of him as he stares daggers at the holy item hidden underneath Dick’s shirt. His hand bright red from the contact.

Immediately, Dick rips the thing off of himself and throws it away haphazardly, letting it land on the floor next to the bed, then quickly, almost possessively, wraps his arms around the smaller form and pulls him towards himself.

“Jason, Jason,” the older of the two murmurs, voice intoxicated like he’s under a spell, eyes fluttering shut, lips finding their way to the boy’s cheek and jawline, placing affectionate pecks here and there as he repeats his brother’s name, chanting it like a prayer: “Jason, Jason, Jay-”

Jason does not respond with words. Instead, he sits up while pushing Dick down onto the mattress, balancing himself on his hips. Dick lets him, a little annoyed with this interruption but moans as delicate fingers find the elastic band of his sleep pants and pull it down, releasing his hardness from its confines. 

Then, the boy starts to stroke his length. He sits on top of Dick’s pelvis, ragged nails gently scraping at the sensitive skin of his erect penis as his hands move up and down, making Dick shiver with the sensation and causing him to utter another moan from his throat. And a flash of white temporarily covers his vision.

  
  


In the nights following the graveyard incident, the dreams only kept coming. Sometimes with a familiar voice calling to him. Sometimes a flash of the boy’s likeness at the corner of his eye. Sleep deprivation made it difficult to tell what was real and what wasn’t. And sometimes in his dreams, Dick would hear Jason calling him, softly, seductively, asking to be invited in. And when Dick responded in his sleep - because he’s too grieve-stricken, too lonely, too full of regrets - he would hear the boy gently pushing open the window to climb in, then coming to him, and he greeted him with open arms during his state of half-sleep, letting that smaller body climb onto the bed and lay next to him.

Then all was well, a feeling of calm surrounded Dick as he willingly gave his life to this nightly visitor of his dark fantasies.

As the days went on, Dick started to look pale. His eyes started to hollow, dark rings decking his under eyes every moment of the day. The sun felt blazing, and the night started to give him more and more comfort. The doctor said he was intoxicated by grief, and that he needed outlets that could help divert his mind. But Dick couldn’t find the will or energy to do that. Neither did he want to. The comfort and warmth that the dreams gave him outshone anything that he’d ever wanted in life. Dick stopped answering calls, giving various excuses to Wally, to Kory, and to Donna, for not being able to come to meetups and dates. None of the sleep medication prescribed by the doctors did anything good either. Dick would sleep soundly surrounded by the imprints of Jason’s essence, but he’d still wake up weak, sometimes so much so that he couldn’t even get off of the bed. Bruce’s concerned look never fazed him. Dick would never talk to him, or to Alfred, or to the therapist.

Because Dick had a secret. A secret that he couldn’t let anyone in on.

  
  


Dick’s hands reach for Jason’s buttons before the boy even finishes stroking twice with his hands. The black suit he’s wearing is the same one they put on him for the open casket, now wrinkly with movement and dusty with the dirt from the graveyard. His tie is a deep wine-red, the white shirt underneath feeling silky against Dick’s fingertips as he pulls the collar off a round shoulder, thumb gently stroking the boy’s form as he completely pulls the thing off of Jason’s torso, revealing a span of fresh and not-at-all deceased skin.

The boy looks every bit as alive as his brother, but there are signs. Signs that make his skin crawl and his heart tighten in uneasiness. Signs like how there, etched on the span of his chest and stomach is a giant scar, shaped like the letter Y with two of its ends pointing towards the shoulders and reaching down to meet before stretching to stop just above the crotch. There is a small incision mark near his right carotid artery, too, where a tube was inserted to fill his veins with chemicals. But they can’t be real, because not anyone living can survive that. Just like no one can survive the autopsy meant to be performed on a corpse, survive those unbelievably long and deep cuts, and the organs being taken out one by one for examination, it would be a terrible fate for anyone living. Except, this fairy of his dreams  _ is _ still living, despite the lack of breathing and a heartbeat, despite the healed scars that should mean his death.

Dick runs his hands over that naked torso, mesmerized, eyes darting here and there over that long scar still bearing the imprints of stitches as his hips keep thrusting forward unwittingly into the boy’s hands. Everything about the boy bewitched him, even the most macabre part of his being. Even the extremely faint chemical smell from the embalming process that his body exudes as Dick leans in to kiss him, meant to keep the deceased for longer, yet nothing could preserve his youth and beauty as immortality does.

And immortality is what this is. This unholiness of having Jason all to himself even after his death. Dick knows he is messed up in his desire for his own kin, but too much strength is needed for him to turn his back on this opportunity to see his fantasies come true. And Dick, as he eventually finds out, is no saint.

He runs his hands on that naked, blushing torso some more before taking the boy’s soft hand and kisses those fingertips coated with earth, each and every finger just as flexible as anyone living, not at all turned rigid by rigor mortis. Dick can tell that Jason’s nails used to be torn, dried blood staining it even now. Yet his fingertips are healthy, no wounds can be spotted. Healed. One may even call it divine intervention, if one doesn’t know better.

  
  


He used to dream when Jason was alive too. The boy that Bruce took in after Dick had left for college, the loudmouthed, headstrong, but soft-on-the-inside street rat, so lively in his demeanor, managed to capture Dick’s heart so thoroughly so quickly. Dick had dreamt about kissing him, touching him, feeling him up, and doing all kinds of things to him. Too young and too close a kinship for these thoughts to be anything but sinful - this boy, his adoptive brother - someone that he should be protecting instead.

Dick used to look Jason in the eye and joke about it, only half teasing as he called him things like cute and adorable, if only to see the shade of satisfying pink climb onto the stubborn boy’s cheeks. He would hide everything under the guise of jokes and foolery, too scared to let his own desires be discovered but too unwilling to avoid the object of his obsession completely. Jason with his unusually brilliant blue eyes, his brows furrowing whenever he’s lost in a book he’s reading; always competing with Dick using harsh words but softening whenever a praise was given to him. Such vigor and life, so many years ahead of him of a bright future of happiness, and all Dick had to do was to keep his grim pining forever a secret.

Not relevant anymore. Not after the cruel murder which had left Jason bruised and bloody and  _ buried. _

Ever since that bizarre graveyard incident, Dick had gone back to Jason’s burial site a few more times and was surprised at what he found there. The flowers that he’d brought not two nights prior were scattered and the dirt of the grave was loose. Dick could’ve sworn that he saw what looked like claw marks by human fingers etched in the earth, yet none of it could be seen as definitive proof of an escape. Due to the rain that happened the night before, the earth was wet and reshaped enough that any marks that Dick saw could be nothing more than optical illusions. But Dick wanted to believe that it was true, that some form of Jason had come back to him. 

So Dick started to stay awake during the night if for nothing other than to make sure that he was truly hearing the tapping sounds coming from his windowpane, and that he was really muttering out those bewitched  _ come in _ s, restating his invitation to the visiting succubus. Then the form of the younger boy would open the window and climb into the room, making it to the bed. Dick made sure that he’d felt the boy as his body pressed up to his, the burial suit he was wearing opening at the front to give him access to the silky skin underneath, letting him undo the buckles of his trousers as he sat down smoothly onto Dick’s erection, bony fingers clutching his bare shoulders for support. Dick would look upon that serene face which belonged to his brother, feeling the weight of that smaller body on top of him as he entered him from underneath. The boy’s body taking him in easily as if it’s nothing. The heat of him unnaturally intoxicating, everything that Dick had ever dreamt about but could never have.

And then, Jason would give him the deadly kiss. Only a single moment of sharp pain on his neck behind the ear, followed by the sounds of sucking and a feeling of drunkenness as his life was drawn out of him, weakening him, but it felt too peaceful and too rewarding for Dick to refuse.

  
  


Jason allows Dick to open the buckle on his belt and unzip his black trousers. Dick eagerly undresses him, revealing the boy’s erect penis and that tight hole at his rear, looking fresh and inviting in its shade of pink, both framed by the flushing skin of his stomach and his inner thighs.

Dick gently gives the length a few strokes, still unsure of how it works. But as his fingertips find the entrance and poke in, it easily takes him as if that’s what it’s always meant to do. Fingers sliding in and out with a natural slip that needs no lubrication unlike someone alive does, almost like the body above him is a statue made from wax and silicon, giving out an air of unreal.

As he is doing this, Jason sits and balances himself on Dick’s lap, completely agreeable and obedient to everything his elder is doing to him. Dick eventually leaves Jason’s length to focus on his hole completely, knowing his succubus never truly orgasms in all their couplings and he has had to come to terms with that. The heat inside of him feels unreal, and Jason’s body is shaping to his fingers so well that this alone is making Dick moan in anticipation, and in his ecstasy, Dick rolls his hips and his eyes flutter shut, a series of incoherent blabberings leaving his lips.

“Yes- Jay,” he says, “you’re so good. Being so good for me, opening yourself like this.”

The boy would not have been this compliant when he was alive, it’s simply impossible. Nothing beats this - this sinful union with his own family member. Jason is not only just fifteen but also his little brother, adopted though he was. But now he’s turned into something else. Something that has even more power over Dick than he did before.

After stretching out the hole just a little bit more, Dick holds onto Jason’s pelvis to help him lift himself up, and Jason helps him, positioning himself on top of Dick’s erection. He sinks down onto him before Dick is ready for it, and the intoxicating pleasure pulls another moan out of his mouth.

“Dickie,” Jason finally speaks as he gradually sinks down and Dick rolls his hips up to accommodate. 

The older man’s head is entirely cloudy now, almost unable to hear what the boy is trying to say. His voice sounds different too, deeper and a lot more inviting, a darker intent hidden underneath that facade of seduction. But Dick doesn’t care. He holds onto the boy’s hips as he thrusts himself up, piercing deeper into Jason’s warm passage. Moans and sighs keep coming out of his mouth, and even before Jason speaks his request, sounding not at all breathless like one would generally perceive how an astral succubus would act, Dick already knows his answer is yes.

“I’m hungry, Dick,” Jason says calmly, “I want to drink.” 

Dick places one hand at the back of Jason’s head before pressing him downwards, almost forcibly, holding the boy’s mouth close to his artery and says, “Take it. Take as much as you need. Just keep letting me hold you like this.”

Jason opens his mouth wide and Dick doesn’t flinch when those sharp needle-like teeth pierce his skin. The pain is instantaneous, but it gradually fades as Jason finally has access to the sweet fluid housed in his body. He begins to suck and slurp adorably, sounding not unlike how he did with the cup of milkshake and a straw when they’d gone to the carnival, and Dick was too fixated on how Jason’s lips closed on the thick straw slowly and how he licked away the white viscous liquid to remember any of their conversations that day.

Dick often wonders whether it would’ve felt this good holding Jason when he was alive too. Whether the weight of his body would’ve felt this calming and intimate if they’d laid together, or if Jason would’ve acted just as satisfied and cute when Dick kissed him, just like how he looks right now, feeding from Dick’s body, taking more and more from him, draining his life bit by bit to keep himself animated.

  
  


The nights leading up to tonight, Jason had been coming to him more and more often while Dick became increasingly weak. Until Bruce started to notice the changes and the incoherent words that Dick sometimes murmured to himself, as well as the telltale signs like that of a couple of small puncture wounds always present at where his jugular was. The crucifix was gifted to him under the guise of a nice-looking and valuable antique that Bruce just so happened to come upon when walking into a shop, but the garlic flowers were a lot harder for them to find excuses for. Alfred started to arrange them near Dick’s windows every night, giving out fake comforting words about how their unique beauty gave an air of life to the otherwise gloomy bedroom, speaking of anything but Jason, anything but death. Not that it did any good, however. 

They said if he kept this obsession up, he would die. They were seeing the signs of unhealthy coping, of harmful behaviors, and of depression. But would it have been so bad if he did? Would it really be so bad if Dick had left behind his mortal life to join his love in death?

Eventually one day, Bruce sat Dick down and talked to him. It was obvious that his elder was getting desperate, knowing the man as Dick does, he knew that talking was Bruce’s last resort. The man told Dick about the creatures that came during the night and needed verbal invitations to harm him, creatures that looked and sounded like us and our lost loves yet were  _ nothing _ like us at their core; creatures that had no souls of their own and took the blood of the living to sustain their own unholy life. They were usually close relatives of the ones they feed on, Bruce had said, their own family or loved ones, and they drain you night after night, gradually consuming the very life out of you until you finally die from it, or at least eventually become one of them. Undead, animated corpses without souls or conscience that preyed on others. Unless you kill them, Bruce said, and end the vicious cycle once and for all. It was the right thing to do.

_ Release your brother’s soul from its confines of the unholy, and it won’t be until then that can he truly move on and rest in peace. _

But Dick didn’t believe him. Or, he simply didn’t listen because he did not want to believe. He did not want to entertain the idea that Jason was just a soulless corpse and he had been laying night after night with nothing more than an empty shell of a dead boy. That there would never be a time that he could tell Jason how he truly felt and receive a real answer, any answer, that could provide him with some kind of closure. That he’d never find closure to this painful pining over his dead brother.

  
  


Jason is now splayed on top of him, Dick’s hips rocking him up and down as his mouth is firmly attached to his neck, making a sucking sound as the frame of the bed jolts back-and-forth with Dick’s movement.

Dick shifts the boy's head and leaves him to it, letting him drink and make almost adorable slurping noises, sounding not unlike a hungry child. He lazily takes a hold of Jason’s hand and examines the nails, looking at the uneven edge where pieces were torn off and healed again, and at the little bit of earth stuck inside of them. Dick lifts one hand to cup at the back of the boy’s head, fingers inserting into the black locks of hair so that they could feel the shallow scars and stitches from deadly head traumas that are no longer there. All reminders that Jason had been dead once and the boy he’s holding is not him. Not  _ really. _

This is not closure. Rather, a strange case of escapism. Sometimes Dick still wonders if this Jason in his arms is real; if he’d just dreamt him up, and Dick could open his eyes any minute and remember that everything was just a fantasy, and that the only place Jason still resides is in his coffin hidden underneath six feet of earth.

He comes in ecstasy like he always does on these nights. Dick’s head tilts up as his eyelids flutter shut, a long, dragged-out moan leaves his mouth as he lifts his hips up and shoots his seed into the boy atop of him. Jason’s own hips and torso is jostled by his movement, but his mouth never leaves Dick’s neck, attached to him with teeth piercing into the skin. Dick holds him close, buries his nose into the mop of black hair, ignoring those healed bumps from his traumatic death. He takes a long, deep breath, taking in the smell of graveyard dirt and rainwater, as well as just the faintest hint of chemicals. A little bit of death.

The orgasm quite literally took the breath out of him. It’s such a powerful and sinful moment of release that Dick almost immediately starts to sob, hating himself that even now as those fantasies still won’t go away; asking, begging for Dick to continue his lust over a dead boy, and to use him just as he’s using Dick, continue the vicious cycle until he’s also dead and buried. It’s such a sinful thought, one that Dick will take to his grave, and one that only Jason -  _ this _ Jason, this perfectly beautiful duplicate of his dead brother, this seductive changeling, a fairy that comes at night, a captivating succubus of his dreams which Dick does not wish to be woken from - can make a reality.

That’s why Jason still comes each night, still soothes Dick with his presence. Dim thoughts of death still surround Dick’s mind like a muddy sea from which he can not get out of. It’s why Dick welcomes them, lets them consume him, and the macabre nature of the thing is strangely comforting to him. He never refuses the request for invitation, never says no. Because Dick knows if he does the boy will disappear, and the illusion will be broken, and he’ll truly lose him forever. Jason Todd then will truly be dead.

But if he lets him stay, lets him into the room, then Jason will keep visiting, keep him company, and the illusion will become real. That little boy’s ghost in his dreams will become a reality, and he will belong to Dick at least in some capacity, and Dick will keep him alive somewhat.

Even if that will lead to his own eventual demise.

“Will I see you again?” Dick asks, trying but failing miserably to hide the desperation in his voice.

Jason has stopped drinking a while ago, but his mouth has still been firmly attached to the man’s neck. He eventually sits up, lifting his hips to pull Dick out of himself. Then, in a weirdly human-looking gesture, he fingers himself to get the rest of the cum out of his hole, which still looks tight and unused, almost making Dick question whether what he experienced really happened.

“Yeah,” Jason then answers, kissing the corner of his lips before buttoning himself up again. Dick wishes he could help him, but his body is feeling so drained that he can barely keep his eyes open.

He doesn’t wait for Jason to finish with his shirt, though, before pulling the boy in almost forcibly for another fervent kiss, forcing himself to overlook those insanely sharp, inhuman canines still tinged with the taste of wet iron.

“Please, please do,” he said with his lips pressed against Jason’s, voice almost breaking, “I can’t lose you again, I need you here with me. I want you to be mine.”

Jason responds by licking Dick’s lips. His tongue still tastes like blood, and every single action he displays is tinted by an inhuman, almost animalistic, hunger.

Jason may have said something more, or he may have simply left without another word, but Dick can’t remember anything after that. His eyes are shut by the time the ghostly shadow of his brother starts to climb down from the bed and leaps through the open window, and vague dreams are already invading his thoughts. There is only a sound of shuffling and clicking before he loses his consciousness completely, followed by a constant sighing coming from the window.

It may just be the wind, but that doesn’t matter. Dick knows that he can see Jason again. And that’s everything that matters to him.


End file.
